2011 NBA Post Mortem

I wasn't going to write anything more about this year's NBA season, but it was so swell, I couldn't help it.  Plus, there seems to be an overload of dumbass narrative associated with the season, so it can't hurt to add some perspective outside of the 24 hour yak machine in Bristol.  And yes, I know it's really late, but that's what happens when you try to keep three blogs, two musical projects, and a 45-hour-a-week day (and night and weekend) job.

• The Mavs didn't win the title, the Heat lost it.  Bullshit.  First of all, that's a silly cliche on the surface of it: the Mavs won the title, the Heat lost it.  BOTH THINGS HAPPENED.  But seriously, too many people are characterizing this as a series the Heat gave away, which is ridiculous.  In spite of the individual basketball awesomeness of LeBron, Wade, and Bosh, the ingredients weren't there for a good basketball team, at least not immediately, and not without some real work and sacrifice on everybody's part.  This is a point that has been heavily discussed (both here and elsewhere), and yet so many still seem to be missing the point.  The Heat may have had the better individuals, but the Mavs had the better team.  That doesn't mean that the Heat will never be a good team - as a matter of fact, they made some pretty serious strides in the playoffs - it just means that the best players don't always make the best team, at least not right out of the box.
• "Scoring the ball".  I just have an image of some guy in carpenter's overalls whipping out an old-school pocket knife and cutting the surface of the basketball.  Is there any way we could just lose this hideous phrase?  Didn't think so.
• LeBron isn't clutch; LeBron needs to become a killer, like Kobe Bryant.  Let's deal with that last one first, because I have said that myself before: when the game's on the line, who would you rather have the ball, Kobe or LeBron?  To the NBA fan, the answer would seem obvious, but it's not.  Of all the players who took part in this year's playoffs, who would you hand the ball to?  Kobe?  Not so fast - according to stats compiled by True Hoop's Henry Abbott, the first guy you would give the ball to is Carmelo Anthony.  No surprise there, the guy is probably the most lethal scorer in basketball, and that includes Kobe.  So, okay, Kobe's next, right?  Nope . . . how about Chris Paul, Shawn Marion (?!), Brandon Roy (no surprise there), Hedo Turkoglu (okay, leave him out after the brain farts he let out this year), and Mike Bibby (??!!)?  If you say to me "Dirk Nowitzki", I say "no duh" after what he did this year, but this list was compiled before his coming out party.  Then, how about Tim Duncan, Eddie Jones, and Raymond Felton?  And next we have . . . LeBron James?  Yup, the much-maligned King James is ahead of Kobe on this list, as is Ray Allen and Gilbert "Hibachi" Arenas.  As a matter of fact, Kobe is only about 1.5 points better than the league average at clutch time, and just over 15 points short of Carmelo . . . so, don't believe everything you think you know.  While LeBron did have a pretty serious drop off during the playoffs this year, I think it has to do with a lot more that "not being clutch", some of which we'll get into below.
• LeBron James needs to work with a sports psychologist to cure his crunch-time woes.  Jesus Christ.  LeBron doesn't need a sports psychologist, he needs a midrange and post up game.
• LeBron James needs to work with a sports psychologist to cure his crunch-time woes.  The writer and editor in me wants to leave the pithy response above by itself, but this was seriously suggested by more than a few talking sports heads (the emptiest of all heads), so a longer response seems warranted.  First of all, I think we really need to see that LeBron is not really that bad in the clutch, as noted above.  And if he does tend to disappear, which he does sometimes, I think it has less to do with him than with his coaches.  When he was with Cleveland, there was no question he was the man, and I think he did a much better job as a closer.  But this year with Miami, having to share the court with another "legendary closer" (D. Wade), his role is much less clearly defined.  I think it's this indecisiveness that showed this year, not some sort of mental block, or "yips".  Better coaching will lead to more clearly defined roles which will lead to more decisive action in crunch time.
• In spite of having a rough series, LeBron is still the best player in basketball.  This one's hotly debated. I think that LeBron is potentially the best player in basketball, but right now I don't see him in the top five.  Most of it, in my mind at least, has to do with the lack of a midrange and post-up game mentioned above.  Nobody in the world can shut down LBJ one-on-one, but basketball, being a team game, means you don't have to.  Right now, all you have to do is pack your defense down around the paint to keep Wade and James away from the basket, making sure most of all to always have someone in front of James, and you have a real chance at beating the Heat.  There are three-point shooters on the Heat (Miller, House, Jones, occasionally Chalmers), so that's not the problem . . . besides, you can steal a game or two with the three, but you won't win a series.  And James, for his part, is either driving in or tossing up a three; you stop him somewhere in the middle, and he's not scoring.  Look at Carmelo or Durant: is there anywhere on the floor where they don't score?  Or Dirk: not the most graceful or convincing drive in the league, but it doesn't have to be pretty to be effective; and right now, that fade-away jumper of his is among the most unstoppable scoring shots I've seen since Kareem's sky hook.  The thing about LeBron is this: you can tell he's never really had to work on his game that hard.  Unlike MJ, he wasn't cut by his freshman team.  Unlike Bird, he could get by on his lightning reflexes, so he doesn't have to anticipate, he doesn't have to play the game two steps ahead of everybody else.  Unlike any given little guy (say, Juan Jose Berea or, even better, Alan Iverson), he can count on his bulk and athleticism to get to the basket, so he didn't have to develop any kind of subterfuge to help him out.  LeBron, being almost superhuman, always had that to fall back on.  Problem is, once you get to the upper echelons of the game, there is always someone only slightly less superhuman than you ready to put out the extra effort to shut you down just when you need that basket the most.  This, to me, is James's problem, and also the reason why this year's playoffs could turn him into the best player in the game. I have no doubt about his willingness to work, and his humility shouldn't be a question after this year's comeuppance; but now he needs some guidance, and he needs to show that he can improve his game, both mentally and physically.
• LeBron is not living up to expectations.  First of all, he's still relatively young.  Secondly, I think that his ceiling is higher than any ceiling we've ever seen in the league, and indeed, he is already a very good player, but there seems to be a lot about the game that he has yet to understand.  We see him as a physical specimen, not a basketball player, and when the elite physical specimen is considered as a not-always-elite basketball player, we are disappointed.  At a certain point, we just have to admit that LeBron is not quite that good . . . yet.
• The Mavericks had a good run this year, but next year they still have to be considered longshots.  Really?  You're still going to bet against the Mavs?  I'll admit that, with the rise of the young teams in the West (the Thunder, and now the Grizzlies too), the whole playoff picture is getting murky.  And if someone can step in and fix the Heat's offense, they have to be considered favorites.  But, this win by the Mavs was not a fluke.  They will be back in the picture, and I would count on them as much as I counted on the Lakers last summer.  But of course, all bets are off until the new CBA gets inked, and that is turning into a very sticky problem.

Everyone, even the Heat's biggest critics, still have them winning a ring or three in the upcoming years, and I think that's about right, given the current state of the game.  We can't, however, count on the current state of the game.  Too many franchises are currently loosing money, and unless things are turned around, there will be a contraction in the league.  Plus, I don't really see the owners looking past the sort of free-agent team building exercises that the Heat indulged in this year . . . though, if they did, that would probably be the biggest threat to a Heat dynasty (if Chris Paul ends up in New York or LA, all bets are off).

Meanwhile, the small market teams are in danger.  Oklahoma City caught lightning in a bottle (or rather, Seattle did, then promptly lost the team), but they will only last as long as they can hold on to those young contracts.  Indiana, the one ABA franchise that made money, has been struggling since the Malice at the Palace, and even though they had a strong finish to this year and a bunch of money to spend next year, they still hold out little hope of getting the players that will make them a real threat for the title.  Even the Mavericks are losing money, though only as much as Mark Cuban is willing to lose.

The next CBA will determine the future of the sport.  Here's hoping that one of the best NBA seasons that I can remember will help get everybody on the same page and pulling in the same direction.  This isn't the same as football, where the players are on the short end of the stick and there is a ton of money to be spread around, if only nobody gets too greedy.  Basketball needs both the owners and the players to team up and decide how this game can be run without bankrupting many of the people who put their fortunes on the line for our entertainment, and yet still not holding down the people who actually make this money for the owners. It's going to be a tough fall.

LeBron James as Unwilling Darth Vader, and Other Tales Ending in June; plus, In Rotation

Welcome to June, where here at the homestead, we are wondering if the Tigers can stay close enough to the Indians to benefit from the inevitable Cleveland jinx, and if the ascendancy of the Royals and the Indians actually means a new day in the AL Central.  Well, okay, we don't really spend much time thinking of that at all.  We just hope the Tigers can stabilize their bullpen before August.

It's been a lovely NBA season, truly one of the most satisfying sports seasons in recent memory.  We'll get to that in a minute; but first, a playlist:

In Rotation

Tyler the Creator: Goblin
Death Grips: Exmilitary
Dimitry Shostakovich: Symphony 14
Flipper: Generic and Gone Fishin'
The Germs: GI
The Fall: Dragnet
The Rolling Stones: Between the Buttons
The Flesheaters:  Miss Muerta
Davie Allen and the Arrows: Bullseye
Glenn Gould: Brahms - Ballades, Rhapsodies, Intermezzi
Husker Du: Land Speed Record
Various: Hula Blues - Vintage Steel Guitar
Thurston Moore: Demolished Thoughts
Six Organs of Admittance: Asleep on the Floodplain
OWFGKTA: Radical
Big K.R.I.T.: Return of 4eva
Ornette Coleman: New York is Now
John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (Live)
Autechre: Confield

and from the Indiana Musical Family Tree Archives: Sick City 4, DeAndre Film Student, Dr. Ray, Bateu Futur, Mine., and a few more.

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This sure has been an all-round fun NBA season.  The story lines were all over: the final demise of the Phil Jackson Lakers, followed by the unlikely announcement of the next-generation Lakers under ex-Cavs coach (and perceived, though perhaps unfairly so, LeBron victim) Mike Brown.  The Sixers and my Pacers show plenty of guts in losing causes in the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.  The Pacers, in particular, impressed everybody as a pretty well made car that's just missing an engine (Charles Barkely: "You know, you take LeBron off those Cavaliers teams he was on, and put him on this team, and I think you see a different result in the finals.").

We also saw the re-invention (on the fly, I might add) of the Spurs, put to an untimely end by the rise of the Memphis Grizzlies.  The Hornets, after giving the Lakers fits in their series, wonder if there is any way they are going to be able to hold on to Chris Paul . . . who, by the way, returned to his old form in a way that many of us didn't think was likely, or even possible.  The perennially snake-bit Trailblazers, while pondering their own future, managed to give the Mavericks their only really competitive series before the finals.  The Celtics look too old, the Thunder still too young, and we still wonder if the Grizzlies were a mirage, or if they are for real.  And the only team that truly looked like chumps were the New York Knicks . . . so much for the dangerous Amare/Carmelo combo.

Derrick Rose was able to win one series almost singlehandedly, but not another.  Kobe looked more and more human, though still dangerous.  Garnett looked lost. Chris Paul looked around and saw young "pass first" PGs like Rajon Rondo and Mike Conley stepping up & decided he'd better do the same or risk becoming irrelevant.   Carlos Boozer emerged as the most over-rated player, Marc Gasol as the most under-rated.

And then, the finals.  Miami, who effectively transformed themselves from a likable blue-collar grind-it-out team to villains over the summer, got it together during the playoffs to actually become the team they are on paper.  There is the suggestion that "The Decision", far from being the mistake that everybody including LeBron thought it was, was actually part of Pat Riley's master plan to raise the stakes and form a crucible that would forge the Heat into the great team Riles thinks they are.  Dallas, on the other hand, played steadily and confidently throughout the season only to completely blow up in the first three rounds of the playoffs . . . to the degree that people are mentioning Larry Bird and Dirk Novitzky in the same sentence, and even Bird doesn't have a problem with it.

LeBron's marriage to the Heat has been great for basketball, even if it has been rough on his public image.  The NBA needs bad guys and, unlike the Knicks of the 90's, it needs bad guys with rings.  

So now here we are, with a real good guys v. bad guys final on our hands.  Great end to a great season.

And then, the lockout starts.

I Know It's Early, But . . .

Famous last words, 'cause you know that whenever you see that sentence, the speaker is just about to totally ignore the fact that "it's early" and go ahead to make a rash proclamation from that shaky base.  Just like when somebody says "no disrespect, but . . . " they're about to disrespect somebody.  Or when they say "taking nothing away from _____", they're about to take away from _____.


Dwyane ("The Typo") Wade, after losing to the Pacers:

"The Indiana Pacers -- and take nothing away from them -- but they don't have a lot of playmakers," Wade said. "Their offense is their playmaker and they do a great job of it, but that's why they play the style of ball they play. That's not LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade. That's not our games so we have to figure out with our games and our strengths what to do and that's not us. Yeah, we move the ball and we have offensive sets to get the ball moving, but we're not trying to play like the Indiana Pacers."

Uh, yeah.  They just kicked your ass.  Are you really asking for more?


The implication is that the Pacers play team ball because they have no choice.  Well, that's true (sort of: I wouldn't put Granger in the class of James, Wade, Bryant, or Durant, but he's right there in that second tier with guys like Rose, pre-injury Roy, etc.), but isn't it starting to become clear that you need to be more like the Pacers?  Everybody has said it, including you yourself: there's only one ball.  All you "playmakers" need to become "playmakers" in the real sense - that is, do the little detail-oriented fundamentals-based dirty work it takes to get the job done every single second you are on the floor.  It's not even really clear to me that James and Bosh know how to do that, but at least they have excuses, James having had no college coach and Bosh having had it little better with Rick Barnes, but you had a good coach (Tom Crean), so at least you were taught.  Have you forgotten what it takes?


Then there's this:

"You see guys playing above their heads; there's no secret about it," said Wade, who noted that he feels a bigger bull's eye on the team this season compared to when the Heat were defending champs. "Teams are playing very well against us. There's a lot of things that we have that go against us at times, but we'll figure it out. It's understandable. We understand that we're a team that everyone wants to beat. When they finally do that, it's their playoff game. It's their biggest win of the year possibly, unless they beat the Lakers. I don't think it's going to get too much bigger, so we are not really worried about that."

Well, yeah, except for the fact that the Pacers beat you with their B- game, not their A game.  You may have had an insanely off night, going 1 of 15 from the floor, but Granger wasn't much better at 6 of 21.  We'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe you shoot a tick under 50%, which you normally do, and additionally leave Granger with his atrocious shooting.  That's a twelve-point swing, and guess what?  You still lose by four.  And, not only did Granger have a bad shooting night, but the Pacers' second most important player, Roy Hibbert, only played 21 minutes because of foul trouble.  So: the Pacers beat you with their top scorer shooting 28.57% from the floor and their vital post defender on the bench for almost half the game.  Doesn't seem like the P were playing "above their heads" to me.


Dwyane, you just need to shut the hell up and play.  You and Bron both.

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I'm not jumping to unreasonable conclusions here: if the Heat play up to their full potential, and the Pacers play up to theirs, the Heat win 10 out of 10 (well, nine out of 10, because there's always the chance that the Pacers do this).  And yes, the Heat took a dump on their home floor Monday.  But it's not as clear cut as that: the Heat didn't just lose this game, the Pacers won it.

And yes, that's the source of my early Pacerish optimism: there are things happening here that haven't happened here in a long, long time.  My optimism has its caution, and I'm careful not to expect too much in the won/loss column yet, but there are definitely things that a drawing my attention:

1. They are showing signs of being able to play defense.  Not shut down defense, mind you, but they're closing down the expressway to the iron, and generally contesting jump shots (except against the Heat, when they just totally collapsed in and offered engraved invitations to the King and the Typo to beat them from 25 feet and out).  They are more and more maintaining decent defensive positioning, and generally making things a little more difficult than they have any time since the O'Neal/Artest/Foster era.  And, with Roy Hibbert emerging as a legitimate shot blocker, guys like McBob and Psycho T can play close, pesky defense, and if (when) they get beat off the bounce, they just turn their men in toward Hibbert, and he is actually capable of erasing a few of their mistakes.  Like I said, they're not the mid-aughts Pacers or Pistons, but at least now you have to work a little to score on them.
2. And speaking of pesky, so far this year, the effort has been there pretty consistently there.  Nobody is wondering around like they're lost.  Again, part of it is the personality of guys like Hansbrough and McRoberts, who have to go big or go home . . . but, beyond that, it's clear that Jim O'Brien doesn't let anyone on the floor who's not willing to go all out, all the time.  Mistakes they will grudgingly live with (not many - for, as the Typo intimated, the Pacer's margin for error is almost non-existent), but not flying around will get you benched until you earn your way back in.
3. Jim O'Brien's motion offense, though very far from being a finished product, is starting to pay off.  Now, instead of just running down the court and chucking up a shot, the Pacers actually look for the best shooter in the best situation AND actually take steps to achieve that situation.  As a result, everyone is starting to look a little bit better on the offensive end . . . especially T J Ford, who, after a failing grade as the primary point guard last year, is coming around as an important catalyst for the offense off the bench.
4. And speaking of O'Brien, it seems like he is finally starting to realize some sort of vision for the team.  Going into this season, O'Brien seemed like a dead man walking, even if the Pacers managed to profit from the ill fortune of others (here I'm casting my eyes in the direction of New York, New Jersey, Philly, Washington, and Cleveland) and shuffle backwards into the playoffs.  But now, more than just exhorting a ragtag group of nobodies to the upper echelons of mediocrity, it seems possible (just possible!) that O'Brien has a vision of how to instill some sort of personality into that motley crew, and further, that he has a program that, given players with the right combination of talent and work ethic, could get the Pacers back to where they were in the Reggie Miller era.

After losing a heartbreaker to the Thunder (there are no more moral victories in Indy), The P stand at 7 -7, which is hardly a world-beater, given their relatively easy schedule so far.  And yet, there is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, low in candle power though it may be.  For the first time, it seems like maybe, just maybe, this team can be built up instead of blown up.  Certainly there will need to be major improvements, and it is clear that the focal point of the team has yet to arrive (Granger is really good, better than most people think he is - even the ones who think he's good - but, he's Robin, not Batman), but we have here something that the Heat definitely don't have: a good supporting cast.  So far, it is a supporting cast in search of a star, but there is really something here that can be built on.

We know the job of a ball team and its front office . . . or do we?  Answer number one would seem to be to WIN GAMES, but in these days of economic chaos and the capitalization of every last element of our lives, including our sporting endeavors, the main job of a team is to SELL TICKETS.  Of course, winning games makes selling tickets much easier, but it is not the be-all and end-all of a franchise's new reality.  As much as I loved the O'Neal-era Pacers, I was in the minority in this fan base.  Oh, the fans would have gotten behind them if they would have realized their pre-brawl promise, but that support would have been shallow.  Say what you want about Rick Carlisle, but that was an ugly, nasty team.  It had to be an ugly, nasty team to compete with its arch-nemesis Detroit.  It was what was called for at the time.  But the Good, the Bad, and the Crazy always had a short leash with Indiana fans.  And since the debacle at Auburn Hills, the P have been a hard sell, especially after Reggie finally hung it up.

Indiana is the most basketball-savvy fan base around, bar none.  It's not that they prefer high school and college basketball over the pro game, it's just that they have so many choices of top-notch basketball at so many different levels, they're not going to pay attention to a bush-league operation . . . I mean, for Christ's sake, even if you leave the Big Ten and IU and Purdue out of it, you have a Butler team that competes with the big boys year in and year out, and even easy tickets like the University of Indianapolis (alma mater of the Spur's George Hill) and IUPUI can buy you first rate hoop action, and that doesn't even include occasional fits from teams like Evansville, Ball State, and Indiana State, or a top-notch roundball league like the Big East rotating through South Bend, even if the Irish themselves are rather unspectacular and workman-like . . . and then there's the best high school basketball in the nation, and that includes all those trendy East Coast basketball academies.  No, the average Indiana ball fan won't put up with bullshit, because there's quality to be had around every corner.

So how do you serve that fan base?  Good ball.  That simple.  Indiana fans have been resistant to the pro game mainly because of the recent drive-and-kick nature of the pro offense (the very "style of ball" that the Typo is referring to as the anti-Pacers style of ball favored by himself and his Heat boys club).  There is a certain beauty to the one-on-one game of a true basketball genius - I think, in spite of the racial overtones of the anti-NBA sentiment around here, and in spite of the different tastes of the local roundball aficionados, Allen Iverson in his prime would have been well received in Indianapolis - but these days, the drive-and-kick game has completely lost its aesthetic appeal.  Derek Rose is exhibit A in that respect: there is no denying that  he is conscientious, studious, and driven, and there is no denying that he wants to do what's best for his team, and ultimately, there is no denying that his game is first-rate.  But: his game is ugly and uninteresting.  He throws himself at the iron like a chaotic missile, with no grace or art.  In the rare instances he is stopped cold, he kicks it out to a shooter - some guy standing around watching the action - to try to finish the play.  Now, when the driver has some real game to display on the way to the hoop, this approach is fine and enjoyable, but this has led (at the college level as well as the pro level) to an offense where you get a baller with just enough game that you need more than one defender to shut him down on the way to the hole trying to draw the defense into the lane so he can kick to some shooters on the edge.  BORING.  

Contra the drive-and-kick, we have the motion offense.  These days, everyone wants their turn for a solo (is that not the whole offense of the Heat at this point?  Wade and Bron taking turns, and getting Bosh involved when they remember?), but there is more . . . it's like jazz, and I don't make this comparison lightly.  Letting Coltrane run wild while Sanders or Dolphy, along with Tyner, are hanging out on the wings waiting for a kick is one thing, because it's freaking COLTRANE, after all.  And the more chaotic, Don Nelson/Golden State approach, with everyone throwing themselves willy-nilly into the chaos of an offensive possession like the brothers Ayler with Sunny Murray as a trailer, always has a certain car-crash appeal.  But there is nothing to compare to the breathlessness of a free-flowing group improvisation, like Ornette's Free Jazz, with everybody carrying the weight.  It can be free flowing like Steve Nash running the floor with Amar'e and the crew, or it can be orchestrated and disciplined Mingus-style like the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, one of the best teams in the history of basketball.  Or, there can be the charts of varying complexity that are always run as they should be, like every other Bob Knight team that didn't include Isaiah Thomas.  The thing is this: there is a beauty in the complexity of interplay that is lost in today's drive-and-kick offense.  Hoosiers may not give a shit about jazz, but they do give a shit about hoop and its aesthetic dimension, even if the average Hoosier wouldn't know aesthetics if it bit him in the ass.

Which, in a long roundabout, brings me back to this year's Pacers.  Indiana fans will support a team that tries to run a complex, disciplined game, even if they are not particularly successful in doing it.  If the the old-school dynamics are there, if the hustle and the effort are there, if the game has some sophistication, then the average Hoosier ball fan will credit the effort and patiently wait for the payoff.  Running isolations for Jermaine O'Neal* would have been long-term acceptable only if it lofted a banner in the rafters of Conseco Fieldhouse . . . nothing short of that was acceptable, certainly not the Artest freakout, the gangsterisms of Tinsley and Jackson, or the inability of the second generation of the Miller era to get the job done.  No, the average hoosier looks to roundball for aesthetic fulfillment, and he demands sophistication . . . details big and small, like the '87 Hoosiers flouting conventional wisdom and running with UNLV, just a little slower to keep the game at their tempo, not UNLV's; like ultra-conservative Bobby Knight debuting the first big hybrid guard in '76 with Bobby Wilkerson; like Butler neutralizing the K State guard's brutal full-court pressure by having their 6' 10" power forward Gordon Heyward bring the ball up the court (and any time they tried to take him on, he just kicked it back to the guards who exploited the mismatch): like the standard bearers of the old ABA, a flexible, dynamic bunch that included such HOF worthy people as workhorse pivot Mel Daniels, silky smooth Roger Brown, prototype power forward Big Mac George McGinnis, and more; like one of the five greatest ballers of all time, the very Larry Legend that currently runs the Pacers, and whose credit with the faithful is vast, though moving toward its end . . . 

This Pacers crew can earn that love: for while the bar is unbelievably high, there is much credit given for having your heart in the right place.

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*  Incidentally, Jermaine tweeted earlier this year that he wanted to retire a Pacer.  I very, very much want this to happen.  I know that the fanbase will never be reconciled with Ron Artest, but I really think that the implosion of that Pacers team robbed O'Neal of his rightful place in the Pacer pantheon.  I don't know that we necessarily hoist his number 7 into the rafters with McGinnis's 30, Reggie's 31, Daniels's 34, Brown's 35, or Slick Leonard's blue polyester sports coat, but I think that, when he decides to retire, we sign him, have a Jermaine O'Neal Day at Conseco, and then let him go on his way.  It's only fitting.

Shut Up and Show Me the Ring(s)

In amongst all the LeBron mania, it's easy to look past what the Lakers have been doing this summer. They tried hard to get Raja Bell, but ultimately failed. They re-signed Derek Fisher, who, in spite of his limitations, is money in the playoffs. They signed Steve Blake, a good half-court quarterback, to back up Derek Fisher. And now, they've added Matt Barnes.

Sure, not as sexy as Bron-Bron and Wade and Bosh (or even Mike Miller), but I like the method to this madness. Think about it: when the Lakers titled in 2009, they knew that they couldn't stand still, so what did they do? They added Ron Artest who, even at his worst, is going to cause problems for the opponent's 2 or 3, and sometimes even the 1 and 4. Turns out that the mercurial Artest was just enough to push the Lakers over the top for 2010.

Unlike LeBron, who decided he was going to use his influence to put together a fun-time he-man's club with all his friends, Kobe decided to go after the players that pissed him off the most (on the court, at least) - last year Artest, this year Bell and Barnes. Kobe figures that if a player is annoying (and good) enough to get under his skin, then he can do the job against anybody. LeBron, Wade, and Bosh are big kids, Kobe is an assassin.

When you're champions, you don't rebuild, you tune up. What the Lakers have done is to make the NBA's best team even better. Right now, they can go with lineup of Fisher, Bryant, Artest, Gasol, and Bynum, and then sit them all down and run out a lineup of Blake, Vujacic, Odom, Barnes, and Theo Ratliff. Now, that second platoon in and of itself isn't going to scare anybody, but mix it up a bit, get a scorer on the court (maybe leave Gasol out on the court as a pivot with the second unit, put Odom out with the first unit and use Bynum in the middle), and with the exception of Bryant, there's not a hell of a lot of drop off.

The other thing that bothers me about the whole LeBron thing is that, in basketball, a team is never the sum of its parts. Both LeBron and Wade need the ball to be effective, and last time I checked, there's only one ball on the court when the whistle blows. Now, I take all of the Miami Three at their word when they say they will check their egos at the door, but that's not the same as meshing together as a team. Bosh won't be a problem, since he can get a fair amount of action cleaning up underneath. If I'm the point distributing the ball at crunch time, I'm looking for Wade first, LeBron second. As a matter of fact, force of nature though LeBron may be, Wade is easily the better offensive player. The question is this: will LeBron step aside to become the second option on the offensive end? Can he be a role player? More to the point, willing or not, does he even know how to be a role player? It's not like he's ever had to before.

From the beginning, I thought James and Bosh made sense. Or Wade and Bosh. Or James and Stoudemire. Or Wade and Stoudemire . . . well, you're starting to get the idea. Think of a modular basketball team: players have roles defined to varying degrees, but if two players with similar tendencies trying to do the same things are on the floor at the same time, then they're going to get into each other's way. And, as referred to earlier, scorers (as opposed to pure shooters) need the ball to score, and there's only one ball on the court. Both James and Wade make their living the same way: ball in their hands on the wing, creating, moving in to the rack and finishing, or dumping off to the big (Bosh, in this case), or kicking it back to an open shooter on the wing. Who's going to be the creator? Neither Wade or James is going to be the shooter on the wing. James could be one of the orbiting bigs, but Bosh has to be the main offensive focus underneath. There is no clearly defined role on offense for James. It would seem to me to be best if he became an offensive opportunist, maybe a pick and roll guy a la Karl Malone (with Bosh as the low post back-to-the-basket guy).

Whatever . . . they may be able to make this work, but it won't be easy, and at least one player is going to have to move far out of his comfort zone, and ego or no, that will be difficult. It is much easier with clearly defined modular roles, like maybe a slasher and an inside scorer . . . like Bryant and Gasol. The Lakers have a clear blueprint with two top notch scorers, and it is demonstrably hard to kick them off the track. There's not only one solution to the problem, or even a best solution, but the Lakers' solution is clearly effective.

As US National coach Mike Kryzewski has pointed out, one place where Miami will be immediately dominant is on defense. This will give them time to figure out the offense, and ultimately be the key that opens the door to a championship for them. Ironically, if Miami does win it all this year, it will most likely be in an ugly, Detroit Pistons-style championship team, not the super flashy Dream Team-style team. If you remember, the most recent superstar trio (the Celtics' Pierce, Allen, and Garnett), was also a defensive grind-it-out unit in spite of the offensive talents of all three.

But until the confetti falls, don't talk, show me the rings. Kobe has them, LeBron doesn't. Right now, if forced to bet, my money's still on the Lakers.

* * * * *

Don't take this to mean I'm down on LeBron for his free agent soap opera. While the whole TV special was appalling, and while I value a certain hometown fidelity, I am glad to see a player in control instead of the owners for a change.

But I've never been a Miami fan, and now I want them to loose every game. And I'm pissed at them for turning me into a Lakers fan again, no matter how marginally.